As you all know, I've got some brilliant old German textbooks from the 40's and 50's .... here's some of the illustrations you find in them .
Ah! how very studious all these children are ! And how musical ... what wild evening they had in those pre-TV, pre-internet days.
Here they are again .... and this would have been after three hours of homework !...
We always have this stereotype of the "serious, studious" German ... and in my reading I do see a lot of seriousness and a respect for learning ... but there's more than that. Their sense of humour is, I think , very close to the English sense of humour.. the Germans were the first to show the Monty Python programmes for example, and they love Winnie the Pooh and both of the books are gettable in German .. Pu der Bär and the interestingly named " Pu baut ein Haus ! ... notice the emphasis on the building of it ! They were both beautifully put into German by Harry Rowohlt, a great humorist himself.
But layered onto that is I think, a deep vein of sadness in a lot of German writing, and their songs. Well, there's "Kindertotenliede" for a start ! The Janosch children's books have an undercurrent of sadness, as have many other of their books for children.
Well now ... a few cultural musings there ... and now here's that very Judith Holfernes with "Nichts, was wir tun könnten"
Luckily, we have bang-up-to-date textbooks nowadays ...